At least 153 killed after plane crashes into houses in Nigeria

A PASSENGER plane crashed in Nigeria’s largest city yesterday killing all 153 people on board, officials said. Harold Denuren of Nigeria’s civil aviation authority confirmed that all the passengers on the Dana Air flight from Abuja, in the centre of the country, to the coastal city of Lagos died.

The plane crashed in a densely populated neighbourhood of Lagos near the airport.

A spokesman for Nigeria’s national emergency management agency (NEMA) said there were likely to be more casualties on the ground, but the number was so far unknown.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Several thousand people gathered at the site as firefighters tried to put out flames and carry out survivors.

Local resident Praise Richard said he was watching a film when he heard a loud explosion that sounded like a bomb.

He rushed outside and saw massive smoke and flames rising from the crash site.

He said the plane crashed at about 3:45pm local time.

“I don’t think there will be any survivors,” he said. “It would take a miracle.”

The plane did not to appear to have nose-dived into the building, but seemed to have landed on its belly. It first crashed through a furniture shop and then into residential buildings next to a workshop in the densely packed neighbourhood.

The nose of the plane was left embedded in the three-storey apartment building, though it seemed to have damaged only one part of the structure.

Fires still smouldered everywhere as a group of men stood on the landing gear – that was itself smoking – and took pictures with their mobile phones.

At the crash site, parts of the plane’s seats could be seen scattered around.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Firefighters tried to put out the smouldering flames in one of the jet’s engines and carried at least one corpse from the residential building, which continued to crumble.

Two fire engines and about 50 rescue personnel were at the site about an hour after the plane went down.

Some of those gathered around the site helped firefighters bring in the water hoses from their trucks.

Members of the Nigerian Red Cross also arrived on the scene, as well as a team of air crash safety investigators.

A military helicopter flew overhead. The sound of the crowd was also occasionally punctuated by the noise of aircraft still landing at the airport.

Lagos’ international airport is a major hub for West Africa and saw 2.3 million passengers pass through it in 2009, according to the most recent statistics provided by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.

In August 2010, the United States announced that it had given Nigeria the FAA’s Category 1 status, its top safety rating, which allows the nation’s domestic carriers to fly directly to the US.

The Nigerian government said it also now has full radar coverage of the entire nation.

However, it remains a nation where the state-run electricity company is in chaos, and state power and diesel generators sometimes both fail at airports, making radar screens go blank.

Related topics: